One big wrist mess, discouraged...

It's going to be a bit long, bear with me

Let me start from the beginning.

4 months ago, when I practiced handstand, occasionally my right wrist will have a bit pain. And it goes away right after I stop the movement. (At this time, i'm still capable of doing every exercises)

Beginning of March, when H1 came out, I was excited because there are joint conditioning exercises in it; and I know if I put time in to strengthening my wrist and there will be no occasional pain.

So I started easing into H1. At first my joint feels ok, and when I progressed with HS/PE1 and the joint preparation, my wrist starts to feel uncomfortable at times. However, I thought that, as the training goes on it will improve and get better.

At that time I picked up flag football during weekends, where I do alot of blocking. After two weeks or so, my right wrist started feeling uncomfortable even when i'm not doing any thing.

Because of it, I deloaded on H1, and think that by doing it, It'll help my wrist get into shape. As time passes, my right wrist even started to hurt when I handle stuff. So I totally stopped H1 on beginning of Apirl.

One day I was at school, I hi-fived my friend, and he gave me this self-defense move where he twists my wrist, and that  causes some pain.

Gradually I realize, even the exercises that requires my palm on the ground hurts my right wrist, so I dropped those exercises too.

I currently go to college, and it requires decent amount of typing. So in order to compensate my right hand, i use my left hand to write and type at times.

And gradually, left wrist pain kicks in as well.

both of my wrist hurts when I bend my wrist at any angle and squeeze my fingers.

My right wrist is a bit swollen, which is hard to tell. And I circled the pain areas:

RIGHT HAND

   compere to 

LEFT:

I feel freaking handicapped right now, both my wrists are messed up. I basically can not handle anything, and it feels uncomfortable when I type right now.

see a Doctor, man. 

I really don't know what else to say as this is definitely not my cup of tea. 

if you can make it to see someone who specializes in Athletes that would be awesome. 

praying for a speedy recovery for you! 

Hi,

in my experience I have found that the wrist exercises have a delayed effect of soreness in the joints used even without evident pain and even if one think to have approached them gradually.

This makes the wrists extremely vulnerable to stress if they had not complete at least the recovery from the last wrist series and this is even more true for areas that are usually never used or trained like their sides that are engaged from the wrist rock exercise and where you now feel pain.

It seems to me that you have put stress on your wrists when they were not ready to bear it and, due to the absence of a strong and continuos pain, you have created a spiral of worsening symptoms not stopping immediately all the activities and making it too gradually instead.

Now you are in a situation where even the ordinary tasks start to or cause pain.

Probably the pain near your left elbow is due to an overuse of the left arm for typing which caused a chronic contracture of the muscles of the forearm and I think it could respond well to a massage ball or a foam roller treatment.

What I suggest is this: seeing a doctor is a good advice as Keilani stated, and if what I have supposed is correct

and you have only an inflammation of the wrist joints he probably will prescribe anti-inflammatory drugs that are notorius harmful for your body a one way or another, so I advise you to try first alternatives not based on synthetic drugs.

In my decades of experience for joint, tendon an muscolar inflamation problems nothing beats simple clay applications if the clay is of good quality and is used in adeguate quantity.

Here in Italy it is usually sold in natural herbs shops, the best one that I have found is this:

http://www.argiletz.com

from France.

It gives immediate pain release and stimulates the process of reparation and rigeneration of damaged muscolar and joint tissues and releases useful minerals as silicon that is fondamental for the health of the connective tissue.

I suggest you to start a cycle of application, and keep them all night.

By the way the clay is the primary treatment and largely used in spa for the problems of above.

I don't know where you can find it where you live but if you search for natural herbs and food shops, you should find something.

It is also sold by amazon, but I don't know how it is the quality.

In addition to this, if you want also an internal approach I suggest to assume astaxanthin that is a natural substance extracted from a red algae, it is the most powerful natural antioxidant known and it has a strong anti-inflammatory effect, even if it is more gradual than the syntetic drug it has not collateral effects.

As more general advices, stop the consumption of white sugar in every form and of all foods that contain it, it

is a killer aliment for the body and promotes joint and inflammation problems.

Eliminate or reduce to a minimum the consumption of animal foods, junk foods, coffe, various drinks ecc.

and increase the amount of fruits and vegetables and the sources of vegetable proteins.

I hope this was helpful.

It is likely too much too fast on unconditioned joints, but to be sure there is nothing else, see your Doc as was said above.

(you can try clay or colorful algae or no sugar at very little risk )

*** Shouldn't this thread be moved to the H1 forum? ***

 I've dealt with carpal tunnel stuff from typing too much. Some of this has to do with how your hand/wrist is situated. Ideally you want it to be level not an upwards angle and not with the wrist bent. I have found it a huge help to actually use one of those gel pads you rest your wrist for using the mouse. These days I just use a small hand towel folded up because my gel pad is AWOL,

 Rice bucket therapy.

 I like DB wrist circles. Lots and lots and lots. I also work on my elbow and shoulder mobility so it doesn't go downstream if my shoulder is tight, my elbow is tight, etc.

 What your friend did was annoying. Shoulda totally kicked him in the jewels. My left elbow has never been the same after my friend slightly hyperextended it during an arm bar I tried to fight when we got into wrestling. I have gotten him pretty good a couple of times though, heh.

 When the Jerks get heavy or the BackSquats get really heavy or if I have had a few days of lifting, I wrap my wrists with these bike tubes I cut up. Got the idea from the MWOD but I wrap them as a wrist wrap and not a Squeeze my wrists to death Voodoo wrapping modality. This is just a stop-gap solution though.

Thank you everyone, how does an acupuncturist sound?

You can try all kinds of alternative medicines, and if they work that's great.

In my opinion, in addition to whatever other treatment you decide to pursue you should consider the following:

Contrast baths: 60s hot, 60s cold. Use the shower. Yes, the first cold minute sucks, but after that it isn't that bad, and you'll feel VERY good. Don't just hit the wrist, do the entire upper body at the very least. You need to stimulate blood and lymphatic flow throughout the body. I would do this 1-2x per day.

Other than that, stop blocking with a weak wrist! If you're going to block, you need to learn HOW to block. You need to be squeezing your hand muscles. If I were you, I would take the rest of this season off of blocking duty for the football.

You have to take the hand work slowly... You could also consider performing thick bar farmer walks as therapy after a few weeks. That will help strengthen all the hand and finger muscles without putting compressive pressure on the wrists. Just run a rope through a 6" section of 1" or 1.5" PVC and then tie it to a weight or a bucket. You could also just tie the weight or bucket to each end of a thick tree branch, etc. Make your own thick handles.

Make sure to get some good medical advice on how to progress your hand therapy, because I get the feeling that if you don't get professional guidance you're going to push too fast and turn rehab into re-injury.

Your fundamental error was continuing to train through pain.  At your level this is always a bad idea.  You are not training for the Olympics, but rather for health, fitness and fun.  As you have discovered, there is nothing fun (or productive) about being hurt.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

I want to put in one suggestion that worked wonders for me. I bought a wrist brace for my problem hand and wore it at night while I slept. Not during the day or while training. I would wake up in a few hours and my wrists would feel really tired, rested, and much healthier, at which I point I would take the brace off and go back to sleep. In about two weeks of this I was good as new.

If you try this and it works for you I recommend staying off your wrists entirely during this healing period and then working in some prehab as you get back into things. Let me know if this works for you as it has met with a lot of success to people I've recommended it to.

I do this before every H1/F1 session and also on occasion when im out driving. don't do it until you feel good though

First off, Coach is absolutely right. You should not be training through painful joints. I know it is tempting, but taking the time to find the root cause and fix it ends up wasting much less training time than trying to power through the pain, no matter how insignificant it may seem at the time.

Sleeping in a wrist brace can be absolutely fantastic, because some people sleep weird and end up putting their wrists in a bad position, leading to difficult-to-diagnose wrist pain. This is a really good suggestion. It won't hurt, and may help a lot. Of course it might do absolutely nothing, but it's worth a try in my opinion.

@Blair: lol...I have strong legs, if i kick it, I guess his jewels might break and scatter. For my wrist, I'll use towels for both mouse and keyboard. .

@joshua: Contraction shower, whenever I take cold shower, the movie titanic just comes to my mind.

@IcedDante: Got my right wrist brace last week, I wore them throughout the day, and as well as sleeping. I always try to stay off from using my right wrist  as much as possible, but left wrist pain kicks in if I always compensate for my right....

@Coach: Sigh..... yes.....

Can't do any push/ pull exercises and I feel so..... Inactive Oh, On top of that I can't train legs as well, because I injured it from back flip, and currently on rehab right now.

So what I think i can do right now are only abs and lower back.

what do you guys think about these exercises  with resistance band to maintain my lats and chest strength (my gains)?

start from 3:45

If it's recommended, i'll go order some bands and start doing them.

 

lol...I have strong legs, if i kick it, I guess his jewels might break and scatter.

 He'll learn not to do said wrist lock then. A nice snap kick that says "hello" is all that's needed. Just a bit of a slap more than a tickle.

 Yeah, you could attach some bands to your wrists and move your arms around. Think total gym/band series.

If it's any consolation I'm in the same boat.

I was doing fine in my Gymnastic Strength Training™ when I started climbing last fall. I did it 2-3 times a week and my strength really took off, in december I was doing one arm pull ups and front levers and feeling great. I thought I was cautious enough, doing long warm-ups and resting when I felt I needed it, but I started to feel some pain in the wrists (mostly the right one) when I was attempting harder bouldering problems with awkward angles. I should have stuck to basics and not pushed myself but climbing was too fun and I couldn't stop trying harder and harder stuff. So in fact I wasn't cautious at all.

Then I went on a one month long vacation and spent a half hour or so every day doing some handstand work, some pistol squats and HLL's/front levers/pullups wherever I could find a place to hang. I had no trouble with the wrist at all then and I pretty much forgot that it had ever been hurting. I thought that it had healed up.

When I got back to the climbing gym I left my brain outside and went for a really tough workout. The day after my right wrist was really stiff and painful. So I took a big step back, rested a lot, did more basic stuff instead. No climbing at all. I did whatever didn't hurt. Within a few months I could do some ring work again (no false grip stuff), some handstanding on the floor and so on. It felt good and I could notice a huge difference in the right wrist's mobility just before and after some movements like L-sit to shoulderstand in the rings. Just felt great. Then one day the pain came back. I thought I had been careful enough but I was wrong again.

I kept going at it with my left arm though, and yes, I suddenly got the same pain there too after a while

So now I have braces on both wrists, like a young Forrest Gump except it's the arms and not the legs. I'm doing F1 work as far as the wrists are not involved, which means skipping quite a lot.

I sought medical advice and was told to rest, so that's what I'm doing. Resting and feeling as stupid as I look

e04 said:

@joshua: Contraction shower, whenever I take cold shower, the movie titanic just comes to my mind.

It's mostly uncomfortable the first and maybe second time you go cold. Try going cold slowly the first time without even reaching the temperature you're going for, then go back to hot, next time go a little colder, and after a few minutes going back and forth it won't feel so bad going very cold. I don't think that this will have less effect since you can spend an hour if you want to doing it the intended way after easing into it, but please correct me if I'm wrong.